Endings
by Spellthief
Summary: "A story without an ending is a cruel thing." 22 might-have-beens.


I.

Once upon a time, there was a man who died.

And he stayed dead.

II.

Once upon a time, there was a little yellow duck, floating on her lake. And there was a storybook prince, too. She looked in his eyes and thought they looked so lonely, and for a moment her heart ached.

But she was just a duck. So she swam along, and eventually forgot about the prince, who remained lonely forever.

III.

When Duck threw her pendant into the river, she turned the other way and left the town. She did not see Mytho fall into the water, where he wasted away without ever being found.

"I wonder why that is," his desire for knowledge said aloud.

IV.

"I promise to never appear before you again," Tutu pledged, "so don't worry."

Mytho didn't want her to go. But he did not know how to stop her. So she left, and Rue never remembered that she was a crow, and the story ground to a halt. He lived forever with disappointment, loneliness, and sorrow, and never desired to know why.

V.

"A single gem made of two," Edel said.

Does that mean I should work together with someone? Duck wondered. But who?

Rue would probably work with her. Rue was her friend, and Mytho's girlfriend. She definitely cared a lot about Mytho. And she was such a good dancer and a smart person, so she would probably be lots of help collecting heart shards. And she definitely seemed like she could stand up to Fakir.

"Fakir?" Edel asked. "What is Fakir to you, Duck?"

"Huh? What is he?" Duck shook her head. "Nothing really to me. But he's a dangerous person to Mytho."

Fakir eventually stopped being dangerous. But he never was anything more to Duck.

VI.

"If I pierce my heart with this sword, will that satisfy you, Fakir?" the Prince asked.

"That's right," Fakir said. "Then you'll return to your old self."

Princess Tutu cried out for him to stop, but Mytho saw the pain he was causing those around him, and so he took no heed of her words. He pierced his breast and removed what little heart he had, of his own will.

And because it had been the Prince's own will, Tutu acknowledged her defeat, and retreated from the town, never to be seen again.

They never saw the girl called Duck again, either.

VII.

"Kraehe, why are you in such pain?" Tutu asked. "Is there any way I can help you?"

"Who... is Kraehe?" Rue wondered. "Am I...?"

Then the spell was broken. She shed the black feathers and suddenly she was just a normal human girl again.

Tutu extended a hand out to her, and together they danced. They danced away Kraehe and all Rue's heartache and the memories she was afraid to remember. She came to see that her feelings were precious, the good and the bad, and that she did not need to fight.

Rue spent the rest of the story letting her prince fall in love with someone else. She tried not to be sad when Mytho took Duck into the story with him.

VIII.

Fakir screamed as the crows descended upon him.

He could do nothing as they slowly pecked him to death, and afterwards, Tutu wept over the two halves of his body.

When Kraehe later asked her to confess her love to the Prince, she did so with a smile.

IX.

We might be able to get out through the water, Duck thought to herself. I might be able to check it out if I became a bird, but...

That was too great a secret to trust Fakir with. She stood by quietly as Fakir pondered their escape options, finally volunteering himself to check the water. Duck offered to go herself, but Fakir took that as a personal insult to his ability as a knight, and he was curt with her for the rest of their adventure.

He didn't allow her to vanish that day. Later, though, he wasn't able to stop it.

X.

When Fakir fell into the lake, bloody and battered, no one came to save him. And so he died there, glad that he had managed to defy his fate of being rent in two.

Duck mourned his death, but there was no time for grief afterwards. Alone, she did everything in her power to restore the Prince, but she was defeated in the end.

But she did not vanish into a speck of light, no. She too perished thinking that she had defied her fate.

XI.

Kraehe remembered her father's bidding, to soak shards of the Prince's heart in his noble blood. But in her eagerness to do away with Tutu, the details slipped her mind, and when she finally lost the heart shard, it was as pure as it had ever been.

She worked hard to steal another piece of the Prince's heart. But Tutu was always there to stop her. In the end, she was defeated, and she sunk into despair.

Tutu pitied Kraehe, but she had her own happy ending.

XII.

"Then give me your heart!" Mytho cried out, his voice a scratchy shriek, like a raven's caw.

"Yes," Pique said. Tutu could not reason with her, and Mytho ripped her heart from her chest, still beating and bloody. The raven feasted upon it, gaining the strength to escape his cage.

With this renewed power, he was stronger than ever before. Yet the unending efforts of Tutu eventually restored the tragic Prince, and the two destroyed each other in their age old battle.

XIII.

Tutu was killed by the ghost knight, of all things.

There was no end to Fakir's grief. He was truly useless, unable even to protect a princess, and he retreated into despair. Mytho continued to serve the Raven, but with Tutu gone, there was no way to restore his heart any longer. The Raven ate the Prince's heart, and the heart of the human girl he called daughter, but could not gain eternal life. And so, the day came when he perished along with them.

XIV.

That's right, Fakir thought. I can write.

And yet. To do such a thing could only bring more harm to those he loved. He had tried to intervene once by writing stories, and that had ended in tragedy. He would not risk such a thing again.

Of course, it all ended in tragedy anyway. The knight fell in glorious battle, and the princess vanished into a speck of light. And the prince's never-ending battle with the Raven raged ever onward.

XV.

Autor eventually dragged himself up to his knees. Trembling and half-singed, he crawled across the grass to the girl Duck, who would not stop crying for Fakir.

"It's useless," he growled, grabbing her roughly by the shoulder. She kept crying, clawing at the bark of the tree. "He messed up the connection. You can't save him now. Nobody can."

Indeed, Fakir was beyond saving. He watched all his friends meet their dooms from afar, and felt only contentment. He was no longer a character in a story, but existed outside it, and he discovered a far greater power than any living being could ever have.

XVI.

Rue had not expected that the boy would truly sacrifice his heart for her sake. And so it was only after she had done the unthinkable that she realized that she was not incapable of being loved.

But this knowledge came too late. She had already fed the Raven, and all was lost.

XVII.

Rue was right. Duck knew it was too dangerous to return the last heartshards to Mytho and release the Raven. The best thing she could do was to forget that she was ever Princess Tutu at all.

Fakir was reluctant. But he deferred to Duck's judgement, and tried to use his own powers to restore the Prince.

He spent long days studying, which too soon became years, even decades, until he too forgot that there had ever been anyone called Princess Tutu.

There were whispers of a mysterious raven-man who was said to live in Gold Crown Town, but that was another story.

XVIII.

"Now Prince, come to me of your own power!" boomed the Raven. "Give me your heart!"

The Prince flew up into the sky and Rue grasped at his legs, trying fruitlessly to stop him. But it was Princess Tutu who saved him, as always, when she confessed her love to him and brought him back to his true self. But then she vanished, and the Prince had no hope of victory.

XIX.

Rue confessed her love to save the Prince, but the Prince's true love was Princess Tutu. He defeated the Raven and saved Rue, for he cared for her deeply, but his heart belonged only to Tutu.

Tutu was, in truth, merely a duck. But just as the shard of his heart had given her human form, his love was able to do so as well, and they lived happily ever after.

XX.

"Rue would be carved into the Prince's heart for eternity because she gave herself over to the Raven. And, by keeping the heartshard, Duck would live on in the Prince's heart as Princess Tutu, and not as an ugly little duck.

'Is it all my fault?' she asked.

'Yes, it is. And in order to take off the pendant, you'll have to lay down your life.'

Duck began to sink into the Lake of Despair, walking further and further, deeper and deeper. When she reached the depths of Despair, all life had left her body, and the final heartshard was returned to the Prince at last."

The rest was inevitable, and remained unwritten.

XXI.

"No matter how many years may pass, I vow I will return again and defeat you. Once that's done, I will go and end my own life, and meet the Princess in heaven!" the Prince declared.

And so the Prince took out his heart once again, and sealed the Raven away once more. And many years did pass, but he did not defeat the Raven. Instead he was trapped in an endless cycle of losing and regaining his heart, and for all the rest of eternity, he was unable to meet his Princess in heaven.

XXII.

There was nothing a mere duck could do to save the town. The Prince floundered helplessly, and the little duck danced to her death, attacked by a thousand pecking crows. The victory of the Raven was glorious and terrible, and upon gaining eternal life, his reign was unending.

Somewhere, an old man laughed. For his story, too, was unending.


End file.
